Custom Sympa web templates

The RINO is soon going to start using its Sympa install. Today, I’ve been trying to play a bit with templates.

Part of the information here is going to be useless to most people (notes about my specific install), but there might be interesting information for those of you trying to heavily customize the Sympa web interface.

In the Debian I got from Cyso, the default Sympa templates are located in /usr/share/sympa/wws_templates/.

Now if I copy a modified template file to /etc/sympa/wws_templates/, that file is used instead. For example, I can add a global CSS file by adding the appropriate line in file main.nl.tpl. Note that templates are localized, and that a change in main.nl.tpl will not be reflected in main.us.tpl.

The list of files is as such (I’ll try to document each one here as I work through all of them):

add_request.tpl

list_button_header.tpl

admin.tpl

list_menu.tpl

The left-hand menu giving access to the lists’s functions, dynamically generated for the current user

admin_menu.tpl

lists.tpl

arc.tpl

login.tpl

arc_manage.tpl

loginbanner.tpl

show login form

arc_protect.tpl

loginrequest.tpl

calls loginbanner.tpl (note: Dutch missing from default install)

arcsearch.tpl

main.tpl

the template where the doctype is declared, with the document’s head. That’s where you can add a CSS. It also contains the call to all subsequent templates, and displays the header in the page.

arcsearch_form.tpl

menu.tpl

button_footer.tpl

modindex.tpl

button_header.tpl

notice.tpl

change_email.tpl

pref.tpl

choosepasswd.tpl

remindpasswd.tpl

close_list.tpl

remove_arc.tpl

compose_mail.tpl

rename_list_request.tpl

create_list.tpl

review.tpl

create_list_request.tpl

reviewbouncing.tpl

d_control.tpl

scenario_test.tpl

d_editfile.tpl

search.tpl

d_read.tpl

search_list.tpl

edit_list_request.tpl

search_user.tpl

editfile.tpl

serveradmin.tpl

editsubscriber.tpl

set_pending_list_request.tpl

error.tpl

show_cert.tpl

get_closed_lists.tpl

sigrequest.tpl

get_inactive_lists.tpl

sso_login_succeeded.tpl

get_latest_lists.tpl

stats.tpl

get_pending_lists.tpl

subindex.tpl

help.tpl

suboptions.tpl

help_admin.tpl

subrequest.tpl

The “enter your email address” box where a new user can signup in a public list.

The Sympa doc wasn’t correct because it applied to a later, and then yet unreleased, version. On August 16, Sympa made version 5.1 available for download, and that does support tt2 templates. What’s more, the layout of the default skin shipped with the app has greatly improved, and the code is XHTML+CSS.